What True Freedom ACTUALLY Looks Like

If you’re actively going after the life you want, chances are that life includes some form of freedom with your time, your career, your finances–you get the picture. I’m right there with you.

When seeking freedom, you inevitably need to assess your daily decision-making. When you pursue big visions for your life, at some point you’ll notice that ALL big things result from the continual practice of small habits: your morning routine, your 15 minute mastery sesh, your thought-by-thought efforts to cultivate an abundance mindset. Daily discipline and freedom go hand in hand. There is no other way. 

In fact, freedom is a spiritual discipline at its core–believe it or not. It was Pope John Paul II who famously said, “Freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought.” Freedom lies in the ability not only to choose, but choose wisely.

Authentic, unbridled freedom does not reside in doing what you WANT to do, but in doing what you OUGHT to do.

Seems backwards, right? Many of us are led to believe that freedom means getting to call ALL the shots in your life. No restrictions, whatever you want, whenever you want it. This probably looks something like the time you moved out of your parents’ house and ate nothing but candy for dinner or procrastinated all your chores for a month. Feels good at first, but definitely not a sustainable way to live. 

The way our culture defines “freedom” easily becomes the OPPOSITE: a captivity to our own desires. We can’t help but seek instant gratification much of the time. We notice a craving and seek to satisfy it immediately.

If we are TRULY free, we must harness the ability to say ‘no’ to ourselves in favor of a ‘yes’ that really matters.

‘No’ to snoozing the alarm, ‘Yes’ to getting up early to work on your side hustle. ‘No’ to following toxic “friends” on social media, ‘Yes’ to emotional wellness. The reality is that going after the life you want often means choosing the hard, less-attractive thing–the thing that doesn’t give you a warm fuzzy feeling immediately. 

The good news? You have the ability to choose and you can start today. If you aren’t able to say “no” to yourself and do the thing you OUGHT to do rather than the thing you WANT, ask yourself: are you really free at all?